Australia's
own gladiator Russell Crowe has thrown his weight
behind a push to protect a north Queensland river
on a wildlife reserve created to honour the late
Steve Irwin.

In
an interview during US prime time on the David
Letterman show, Crowe said he was trying to save
the area in memory of his Wildlife Warrior friend
who died in 2006.

"He's
(Irwin) not here to stand up for himself and I
just feel, as his friend, that we can't do nothing,"
Crowe said on The Late Show.

"It
is a global irresponsibility to do that. I made
an offer to the Environment Minister (Peter Garrett)
to have a talk about it, but he hasn't bothered
to respond."

Crowe
explained the Wenlock River operated as a water
filter and was home to some unique plant and animal
species.

His
plea added more than 13,000 signatures to an online
petition for the "Save Steve's Place"
campaign, taking the total number of signatures
to 135,000.

A
spokeswoman for the Irwin family's Australia Zoo
said Steve's widow, Terri Irwin, and others associated
with the fight were thankful for Crowe's support.

Cape
Alumina has been conducting environmental studies
on the site after winning a court battle to access
about 15 per cent of the 135,000-hectare reserve.

The
reserve on Queensland's Cape Yorke Peninsula was
purchased by an Irwin family company, Silverback
Properties, after Irwin's death.

Terri
Irwin has strongly condemned the planned mine
and says it will destroy a pristine environment,
including the Wenlock River.

Cape
Alumina chief executive officer Paul Messenger
said while Crowe was entitled to an opinion, not
all of what he said was correct.

"I
think Steve Irwin had many friends and some of
them are high-profile people who are entitled
to their opinion," he said.

"But
it is important to remember that we are not planning
to mine the river or affect the river at all.
We have no plans to mine any wetland areas."

Mr
Messenger said Cape Alumina had permission to
mine the land about three years prior to Ms Irwin
being granted the reserve and said he expected
operations to get under way in 2013.

Photo
Credit: Reuters

Russell
Ira Crowe (April 7, 1964) is an Academy Award-winning
New Zealand-Australian actor. His acting career
began in the early 1990s with roles in Australian
TV series such as Police Rescue and films such
as Romper Stomper. In the late 1990s, he began
appearing in US films such as the 1997 movie L.A.
Confidential. In the 2000s, he was nominated for
three Oscars, and in 2001, he won the Academy
Award as Best Actor for his starring role in the
film Gladiator.

Biography

Early
life

Crowe
was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the son of
Jocelyn Yvonne (née Wemyss) and John Alexander
Crowe, both of whom were movie set caterers; his
father also managed a hotel. Crowe's maternal
grandfather, Stan Wemyss, was a cinematographer
who, according to Crowe, produced the first film
by New Zealander Geoff Murphy, and was also named
an MBE for filming footage of World War II. Crowe's
maternal great-great-great grandmother was Maori,[citation
needed] and as a result Crowe is registered on
the Maori electoral roll in New Zealand; Crowe
also has Norwegian, Scottish, Irish and Welsh
ancestry. Two of Russell Crowe's cousins, Martin
and Jeff Crowe are former New Zealand national
cricket captains.

Russell Crowe as the man inside the costume of
"Shirty the Slightly Aggressive Bear"
in The Late Show. His character was inspired by
Hando, a role Crowe played in 1992 film Romper
Stomper.

Russell Crowe as the man inside the costume of
"Shirty the Slightly Aggressive Bear"
in The Late Show. His character was inspired by
Hando, a role Crowe played in 1992 film Romper
Stomper.

When
Crowe was four years old, his family moved to
Australia, where his parents pursued a career
in film set catering. The producer of the Australian
TV series Spyforce was his mother's godfather,
and Crowe at age five or six was hired for a line
of dialogue in one episode, opposite series star
Jack Thompson, who years later played Crowe's
father in The Sum of Us and who coincidentally
had been educated at the same school which Crowe
was to attend for two years: Sydney Boys High
School.

From
his youth to the present, Crowe has had a special
love of horses. "They're just like people,"
he told CraveOnline, "there are some horses
that you have a deeper connection with immediately,
and you can work on that over time. He has also
noted that he sometimes finds it difficult to
part with his equine co-stars when a film wraps.

When
he was 14, however, Crowe's family moved back
to New Zealand, where he attended Auckland Grammar
School with his cousins Martin Crowe and Jeff
Crowe. He did not complete secondary school, leaving
early to help his family financially. In the mid-1980s
Russell, under guidance from his good friend Tom
Sharplin, performed as a rock 'n' roll revivalist,
under the stage name Russ Le Roq, and had a New
Zealand single with "I Wanna Be Marlon Brando."

Crowe
returned to Australia at age 21, intending to
apply to the National Institute of Dramatic Art.
"I was working in a theatre show, and talked
to a guy who was then the head of technical support
at NIDA," Crowe recalled. "I asked him
what he thought about me spending three years
at NIDA. He told me it'd be a waste of time. He
said, 'You already do the things you go there
to learn, and you've been doing it for most of
your life, so there's nothing to teach you but
bad habits.'" In 1987 Crowe spent a six-month
stint as a busker when he couldn't find other
work.

After
appearing in the TV series Neighbours and Living
with the Law, Crowe was cast in his first film,
The Crossing (1990), a small-town love triangle
directed by George Ogilvie. Before production
started, a film-student protegé of Ogilvie's,
Steve Wallace, hired Crowe for the film Blood
Oath (1990) (aka Prisoners of the Sun) which was
released a month earlier, although actually filmed
later. In 1992, Crowe starred in the first episode
of the second series of Police Rescue. Also in
1992 Crowe starred in Romper Stomper, an Australian
film which follows the exploits and downfall of
a racist skinhead group in blue-collar suburban
Melbourne, directed by Geoffrey Wright.

Hollywood

After
initial success in Australia, Crowe began acting
in American films. He first co-starred with Denzel
Washington in Virtuosity in 1995. He went on to
become a three-time Oscar nominee, winning the
Academy Award as Best Actor in 2001 for Gladiator.
Crowe wore his grandfather Stan Wemyss's Member
of the Order of the British Empire medal to the
ceremony.

Crowe
received three consecutive best actor Oscar nominations
for The Insider, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind.
Crowe won the best actor award for A Beautiful
Mind at the 2002 BAFTA award ceremony. However
he failed to win the Oscar that year, losing to
Denzel Washington. It has been suggested that
his attack on television producer Malcolm Gerrie
for cutting short his acceptance speech may have
turned voters against him.

All
three films were also nominated for best picture,
and both Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind won the
award. Within the six year stretch from 1997-2003,
he also starred in two other best picture nominees,
L.A. Confidential and Master and Commander: The
Far Side of the World, though he was nominated
for neither. In 2005 he re-teamed with A Beautiful
Mind director Ron Howard for Cinderella Man. In
2006 he re-teamed with Gladiator director Ridley
Scott for A Good Year, the first of two consecutive
collaborations (the second being American Gangster
co-starring again with Denzel Washington, released
in late 2007). While the light romantic comedy
of A Good Year was not greatly received, Crowe
seemed pleased with the film, telling STV in an
interview that he thought it would be enjoyed
by fans of his other films.

On
9 March 2005, Crowe revealed to GQ magazine that
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents had approached
him prior to the 73rd Academy Awards on March
25, 2001 and told him that the Islamist terrorist
group al-Qaeda wanted to kidnap him. Crowe told
the magazine that it was the first time he had
ever heard of al-Qaeda (the September 11 attacks
took place later that year) and was quoted as
saying:

"You
get this late-night call from the FBI when you
arrive in Los Angeles, and they're, like, absolutely
full-on. 'We’ve got to talk to you now before
you do anything. We have to have a discussion
with you, Mr Crowe.'" Crowe recalled that
"it was something to do with some recording
picked up by a French policewoman, I think, in
either Libya or Algiers...it was about taking
iconographic Americans out of the picture as a
sort of cultural-destabilisation plan".

Crowe
was guarded by Secret Service agents for the next
few months, both while shooting films and at award
ceremonies (Scotland Yard also guarded Crowe while
he was promoting Proof of Life in London in February
2001). Crowe said that he "...never fully
understood what the fuck was going on".

Charities

Crowe,
who was in Toronto filming Cinderella Man with
director Ron Howard, learned of a fire-bombing
at a Jewish elementary school that took place
in Montreal. Police said a note with anti-Semitic
comments was found on the outside wall of the
gutted library. He was so distraught that he offered
(reported $250,000 donation) to help rebuild its
library to help the school get back on its feet.
Montreal resident Shelley Paris says, "It
was a huge morale boost for the school community.
He said he was very upset about what had happened
that a place of learning should be attacked that
way. He wanted to make sure that our students
knew that he was thinking about them and that
he was very upset about the fire-bombing."

On
another occasion, Russell Crowe donated a large
sum of money ($200,000) to a struggling primary
school near his home in rural Australia. Crowe's
sympathies were sparked when a pupil drowned at
the nearby Coffs Harbour beach in 2001, and he
believes the pool will help students become better
swimmers and improve their knowledge of water
safety. At the opening ceremony in characteristic
Crowe style he dived into the pool fully clothed
as soon as the venue was declared open. Nana Glen
principal Laurie Renshall says, "The many
things he does up here, people just don't know
about. We've been trying to get a pool for 10
years."

Personal life

On
7 April 2003, his 39th birthday, Crowe married
Australian singer and actress Danielle Spencer.
Crowe met Spencer while filming The Crossing (1990).
Crowe and Spencer have two sons: Charles "Charlie"
Spencer Crowe (born 21 December 2003) and Tennyson
Spencer Crowe (born 7 July 2006).

Most
of the year, Crowe resides in Australia. He has
a home in Sydney at the end of the Finger Wharf
in Woolloomooloo and also a 320 hectare rural
property in Nana Glen near Coffs Harbour, New
South Wales.

It
is believed Russell is looking for an upmarket
home in the Townsville or Thuringowa area for
his niece to live in, so she can study at James
Cook University.

On
June 2005, Actor Russell Crowe was arraigned Monday
afternoon in Manhattan Criminal Court on charges
of second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal
possession of a weapon for allegedly throwing
a hotel telephone that struck a hotel employee
in the face. The man was allegedly hit in the
face by the telephone during a row at the Mercer
Hotel.

Crowe
stated in November 2007 that he would like to
be baptised, and feels that he has put it off
for too long. "I do believe there are more
important things than what is in the mind of a
man," he says. "There is something much
bigger that drives us all. I'm willing to take
that leap of faith."

Football Club

On
19 March 2006, the voting members of the South
Sydney Rabbitohs National Rugby League rugby club
voted (in a 75.8% majority) to allow Crowe and
businessman Peter Holmes à Court to purchase
75% of the club, leaving 25% ownership with the
members. It has cost them A$3 million, and they
will receive four of eight seats on the board
of directors.

Crowe
has been a major supporter of the Rabbitohs rugby
league club for many years, appearing at many
home games, and supporting the club during its
time when they were forced from the National Rugby
League competition for two years. Crowe paid $40,000
for a brass bell used to open the inaugural rugby
league match in Australia in 1908, which he then
returned to the club. In 2005, he made them the
first club team in Australia to be sponsored by
a film, when he negotiated a deal to advertise
his movie Cinderella Man on their jerseys.

He
is friends with many current and former players
of the club, and currently employs former South
Sydney forward Mark Carroll as a bodyguard and
personal trainer. He has encouraged other actors
to support the club, such as Tom Cruise and Burt
Reynolds. Business and television personality
Eddie McGuire has been offered a seat on the Rabbitohs
board.

Crowe
has helped organise the rugby league game that
will take place in Jacksonville, Florida between
the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the European Super
League champions Leeds Rhinos on 26 January (Australia
Day). The game will be played at the University
of North Florida.

Other sporting interests

He
is also a fan of the Richmond Football Club in
the Australian Football League.

As
with Leeds Rhinos, Russell is well known to be
a supporter of Leeds United.

Russell
Crowe is a big supporter of the Michigan Wolverines
football team, he watched the Michigan-Notre Dame
college football game from the Michigan bench
on 15 September 2007. Before the game, he appeared
in the Michigan locker room, and players said
he gave a rousing performance, urging them to
play with honour and heart. Former Michigan head
coach Lloyd Carr is a good friend of Crowe's and
had previously gone to Australia to spend time
with Crowe's South Sydney Rabbitohs. After the
7-5 2005 season, coach Carr used Crowe's film
Cinderella Man to encourage his team, which went
on to win 11 games in a row until The Ohio State
University beat them in the 2006 season.

Russel
Crowe is also a fan of the NFL, and has appeared
in the booth of Monday Night Football at an Indianapolis
Colts and Jacksonville Jaguars game on 22 October
2007.

Crowe
is also considered to be a friend of Kostya Tszyu
who is a boxing world champion, and it is said
that he instructed Crowe while shooting "The
Cinderella Man" movie.

Musical
activities

Crowe,
going under the name of "Rus le Roq",
recorded a 1980's tune titled "I Want To
Be Like Marlon Brando".

Crowe
and a friend formed a band, "Roman Antix",
which later evolved into the Australian pub rock
band 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts. Crowe performed lead
vocals and guitar for the band, which formed in
1992. The band had found neither critical nor
popular success but had several releases including
1998's Gaslight, 2001's Bastard Life or Clarity
and 2003's Other Ways of Speaking, plus various
CD releases now out of print. The band's web site
indicates that group has "dissolved/evolved"
and states that Crowe's music would take a new
direction.

He
continued with a collaboration with Alan Doyle
of the Canadian band Great Big Sea in early 2005,
which also involved members of his previous band.
A new single, Raewyn, was released in April 2005
and an album entitled My Hand, My Heart has been
released for download on iTunes. The album includes
a tribute song to the late actor, Richard Harris,
who became Crowe's friend during the making of
Gladiator. In 2002, he directed the music video
clip (which starred former child actor Duy Nguyen)
for his wife Danielle Spencer's single 'Tickle
Me' from her 'White Monkey' album. On March 10,
2006, Russell Crowe performed with his new band
The Ordinary Fear of God on The Tonight Show with
Jay Leno.

Crowe
landed a role in a musical, "Grease",
in 1983. From 1986-88, Crowe headlined in the
touring production of "The Rocky Horror Picture
Show".

Russell
did about 458 performances of The Rocky Horror
Show. He played Dr. Frank N. Furter 50 times,
and 400 times as Eddie and Dr Scott. (Credit:
Wikipedia).

Biography

Russell
Ira Crowe (born April 7, 1964 in Wellington, New
Zealand) is an Oscar-winning New Zealand-Australian
film actor.

Crowe
was born in Wellington, New Zealand, of British,
and Norwegian descent. When he was four years
old, his family moved to Australia, where his
parents pursued a career in filmset catering.
His maternal grandfather, Stan Wemyss, was a cinematographer
who, according to Crowe, produced the first film
by New Zealander, Geoff Murphy. The producer of
the Australian TV series Spyforce was his mother's
godfather, and Crowe at age five or six was hired
for a line of dialogue in one episode, opposite
series star Jack Thompson, who years later played
Crowe's father in The Sum of Us and who coincidentally
had been educated at the same school which Crowe
was to attend for two years. This was Sydney Boys
High School.

When
he was 14, however, Crowe's family moved back to New
Zealand, where he attended Auckland Grammar School.
He did not complete secondary school, leaving early
to help his family financially. In the mid-1980's
Russell, under guidance from his good mate Tom Sharplin,
performed as a rock'n'roll revivalist, under the stage
name Russ Le Roq, and had a New Zealand single with
"I wanna be Marlon Brando".

Crowe
returned to Australia at age 21, intending to apply
to the National Institute of Dramatic Art. "I
was working in a theater show, and talked to a guy
who was then the head of technical support at NIDA,"
Crowe recalled. "I asked him what he thought
about me spending three years at NIDA. He told me
it'd be a waste of time. He said, 'You already do
the things you go there to learn, and you've been
doing it for most of your life, so there's nothing
to teach you but bad habits.'" In 1987 Crowe
spent a six month stint as a busker when he couldn't
find other work.

After
appearing in the TV series Neighbours, Living with
the Law and The Late Show (Australian TV series) as
'Shirty' - The Slightly Aggressive Bear, Crowe was
cast in his first film, The Crossing (1990), a small-town
love triangle directed by George Ogilvie. Before production
started, a film-student protege of Ogilvie's, Steve
Wallace, hired Crowe for the film "Blood Oath,"
a.k.a. "Prisoners of the Sun" (1990), which
was released a month earlier, although actually filmed
later.

After
initial success in Australia, Crowe began acting in
American films. He went on to become a three-time
Oscar nominee, winning the Academy Award as Best Actor
in 2001 for Gladiator. Crowe wore his grandfather
Stan Wemyss's Member of the Order of the British Empire
medal to the ceremony.

Crowe
received three consecutive best actor Oscar nominations
for The Insider, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. All
three films were also nominated for best picture.
Within the six year stretch from 1997-2003, he also
starred in two other best picture nominees, LA Confidential
and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,
though he was nominated for neither.

On
March 9, 2005, Crowe revealed to GQ magazine that
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents had approached
him prior to the 73rd Academy Awards on March 25,
2001 and told him that the Islamist terrorist group
al-Qaeda wanted to kidnap him. Crowe told the magazine
that it was the first time he had ever heard of al-Qaeda
(the September 11 attacks took place later that year)
and was quoted as saying:

"You
get this late-night call from the FBI when you
arrive in Los Angeles, and they're, like, absolutely
full-on. 'Weve got to talk to you now before
you do anything. We have to have a discussion
with you, Mr. Crowe.'" Crowe recalled that
"it was something to do with some recording
picked up by a French policewoman, I think, in
either Libya or Algiers...it was about taking
iconographic Americans out of the picture as a
sort of cultural-destabilization plan."

Crowe was guarded by Secret Service agents for
the next few months, both while shooting films
and at award ceremonies (Scotland Yard also guarded
Crowe while he was promoting Proof of Life in
London in February 2001). Crowe said that he "never
fully understood what the fuck was going on."
The FBI confirmed Crowe's statement (which is
uncharacteristic of the agency in that it usually
does not comment to the media).

Crowe
has been involved in a number of altercations
in recent years which have given him a reputation
for having a bad temper. When part of Crowe's
appearance at the 2002 British Academy of Film
and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards was cut out
to fit into the BBC's tape-delayed broadcast,
Crowe accosted producer Malcolm Gerrie. During
the filming of A Beautiful Mind on the campus
of Princeton University, Crowe made an obscene
gesture to Princeton student Meredith Moroney
whom he spotted photographing him, which raised
a media stir. In 1999, Crowe was involved in a
scuffle at the Saloon Bar in Coffs Harbour, Australia,
which was caught by a security video.

In
June 2005, Crowe was arrested and charged with second
degree assault by New York Police, in connection with
an incident at the Mercer Hotel, SoHo, New York. Crowe
threw a broken telephone at a hotel employee, and
was charged with fourth-degree criminal possession
of a weapon (the telephone). Crowe, who was sentenced
to conditional release, paid about US$100,000 to settle
the civil lawsuit to the concierge, who was treated
for a facial laceration. Crowe's temperament was parodied
in an episode of the cartoon South Park titled The
New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer. In this episode,
Crowe is the star of his own, fictional TV series:
Russell Crowe: Fightin' Around The World, and he travels
the globe in his tug boat to fight people of different
nationalities. Crowe's temperament was also parodied
on the Australian Seven Network skit show "Big
Bite" in 2003. The Network Ten show The Secret
Life of Us was parodied on the show as The Secret
Life of Russ. The "phone incident" was parodied
in Scary Movie 4 when Brenda is dreaming, one of her
lines is "Look out, Russell Crowe's got a phone!"

On
other occasions, however, he has been known to show
compassion. Following the death of his friend, naturalist
and television personality Steve Irwin, Russell remarked
that Irwin was "the Australian we all aspire
to be." He now hopes to star as Irwin in a biopic
about his life. (Credit:
Wikipedia)